About Us
We are a lower middle-market private equity firm with a passion for helping to build great companies
Longshore Capital Partners, based in Chicago, was established to invest alongside founders and management teams of businesses with unique value propositions in growing end-markets. Before founding Longshore, the Co-Founders built a long history of successful investments in the lower middle-market while Partners at LaSalle Capital.
We take control positions in services businesses in North America with between $5 million and $15 million of EBITDA. Our thematic investment process and industry experience drive our focus on specific subsectors within the broader services landscape. We add value by helping management teams execute on a value creation plan purpose-built to accelerates growth, add infrastructure to achieve operational scale, and strategically position each platform as an attractive asset for buyers at exit, often leading to multiple expansion.
Collaboration with our portfolio companies and taking a value-added approach are core to our culture and investing philosophy. We like to roll up our sleeves as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with management teams to help execute a shared vision, many times in areas outside their core expertise (add-on acquisitions, geographic expansion, sales team buildout – whatever the challenge may be). Beyond our successful track record of helping to build great companies, we take pride in being user friendly and enjoyable to work with. The success we achieve with management teams is shared through incentive programs that align our organization with our portfolio company team members. Further, our investment philosophy does not drive returns from financial engineering – our prudent use of leverage decreases distractions across economic cycles, which tends to maximize returns without excessively increasing risk.
Industry Specialization
Our specialization in the services economy across targeted subsectors drives value for our companies through our networks and experience.
Revenue Cycle
Tech-Enabled BPO
Loyalty/Incentives
Value Creation: RAMP Process
We use our repeatable and systematic RAMP value creation plan template to develop goals and objectives in partnership with management. The plan has four core tenets with the collective objective to accelerate growth and build durable businesses that are attractive to the next set of potential buyers.
Revenue
- Refine the GTM strategy to clarify a platform’s offering in the marketplace and to ensure energy is spent on what will create equity value
- Salesforce build/optimization
- Adding ancillary services to sell to the current customer base
Management
- Top-grade management teams to help accelerate growth and execute a strategic growth plan
- Expand the team in targeted functions to scale for future growth
Acquisitions
- Develop a strategy on what to buy versus build'li>
- Focus on cross-selling service opportunities, geographic expansion, scale benefits
- Inject process discipline into sourcing and screening at the company level and over time build the knowledge base to execute deals with less Board oversight
Productivity
- Add technology tools to track utilization, improve margins, increase stickiness
- Consider upgrading ERP to drive management with data / metrics and visibility into pricing, cash conversion cycle, cohort / churn stats, etc.